Register with us to ensure you receive our future calendar and coordinate predictions for the region of your interest Click Here.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

‘Substantial damage’ after earthquake hits Oklahoma town

About 40 to 50 buildings were damaged after a 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck, said Cushing city manager.

CUSHING, OKLA.—Dozens
of buildings sustained “substantial damage” after a 5.0 magnitude
earthquake struck an Oklahoma town that’s home to one of the world’s key
oil hubs, but officials said Monday that no damage has been reported at
the oil terminal.

Cushing City Manager
Steve Spears said 40 to 50 buildings were damaged in Sunday’s
earthquake, which was the third in Oklahoma this year with a magnitude
of 5.0 or greater. No major injuries have been reported, and Spears said
the damage included cracks to buildings and fallen bricks and facades.

Oklahoma
has had thousands of earthquakes in recent years, with nearly all
traced to the underground injection of waste water left over from oil
and gas production. Sunday’s quake was centred 1.6 kilometres west of
Cushing and about 40 kilometres south of where a magnitude 4.3 quake
forced a shutdown of several wells last week. Some longtime Cushing
residents said Monday they’ve become accustomed to the unsettled ground
beneath their feet. Others shrugged it off as a cost of doing business
living next to an oil hub.

Fearing
aftershocks, police cordoned off older parts of the city about 80
kilometres northeast of Oklahoma City to keep gawkers away late Sunday,
and geologists confirmed that several small quakes have rumbled the
area. Spears said an assisted living community had been evacuated after
damage was reported. The Cushing Public School District cancelled Monday
classes.

The Oklahoma Department of
Transportation reported Sunday night that no highway or bridge damage
was found within a 24-kilometre radius of the earthquake’s epicentre.

The
quake struck at 7:44 p.m. Sunday and was felt as far away as Iowa,
Illinois and Texas. The U.S. Geological Survey initially said Sunday’s
quake was of magnitude 5.3 but later lowered the reading to 5.0.

Damage
in Cushing, Okla., is seen on Monday caused by Sunday night's 5.0
magnitude earthquake. Dozens of buildings sustained "substantial damage"
after a 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck Cushing, home to one of the
world's key oil hubs, but officials said Monday that no damage has been
reported at the oil terminal. (Jim Beckel / AP)

“I
thought my whole trailer was going to tip over, it was shaking it so
bad,” said Cushing resident Cindy Roe, 50. “It was loud and all the
lights went out and you could hear things falling on the ground.

“It was awful and I don’t want to have another one.”

In
recent years, Oklahoma regulators have asked oil and gas producers to
either close waste water injection wells or cut back on the volume of
fluids injected. The reductions have generally led to a drop-off in
quakes and their severity, though not always.

Regulators
said Monday they would shut down some disposal wells near Cushing and
restrict the volume that can be used in others, but said details would
be released Tuesday.

Oklahoma’s strongest
quake on record, a magnitude 5.8 temblor on Sept. 3, occurred in Pawnee,
on the fringe of an area that had already restricted waste water
disposal. Shortly afterward, geologists speculated on whether the
temblor occurred on a previously unknown fault.

Oklahoma
Geological Survey geophysicist Jefferson Chang said Sunday’s quake and
several aftershocks have been occurring on a fault line located about
three kilometres west of Cushing.

“The activity has been going on for the past year and a half or so,” Chang said. “This is just a spike in the activity.”

Cushing’s
oil storage terminal is one of the world’s largest. As of Oct. 28, tank
farms in the countryside around Cushing held 58.5 million barrels of
crude oil, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. The community bills itself as the “Pipeline Crossroads
of the World.”

Cushing Assistant City
Manager Jeremy Frazier said two pipeline companies had reported no
trouble as of late Sunday but that the community hadn’t heard from all
companies. Gov. Mary Fallin tweeted that no damage was reported at the
storage tanks at Cushing’s oil storage terminal.

Some
residents tried to resume normal lives Monday, treating the earthquake
as more nuisance than calamity, even though the temblor could be a
predictor of more to come.

“We live in
Cushing,” said resident Susie Wooten, who was taking pictures of the
cracked bricks outside her dry cleaning business. “You can’t blame the
oilfields; we’re on a major fault line.”

For truck driver James Mutters, having oil tank farms so close to where he lives is a fact of life.

“If
you live here, obviously you know about the oilfields,” he said. “I
drive a truck, so I need to have gas. You can run all the stuff you want
from the sun, but most of the stuff has to be run off something.”

According
to USGS data, there have been about two dozen earthquakes in Oklahoma
in the past week. When particularly strong quakes hit, the Oklahoma
Corporation Commission directs well operators to cease waste water
injections or reduce volume.

“I was at home
doing some work in my office and, basically, you could feel the whole
house sway some,” Spears, the Cushing city manager, said Sunday night.
“It’s beginning to become normal.”